The Reality
Northern secession, howled that the problem with my generation is that we're not radical enough. Voila:
CNN just ran a story indicating they have confirmed the recent terror threat on NYC's subway system was a hoax.
“Authorities said earlier the interrogation of three suspects arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq has so far produced no information to corroborate a possible threat.”
Two days earlier.
The debunked threat was two days debunked when Bloomberg made it a story worthy of displacing his debate no-show. As soon as Bloomberg announced the press conference to scare the bejezus out of us, D.C. officials started scratching their heads and whispering.
“There was no there there,” one anonymous senior Department of Homeland Security counter-terrorism official said, explaining that the credibility of the threat seemed to suggest that the city was overreacting.
No plot was in motion or even being actively contemplated.
Look, FBI branch offices pass all threats to specific targets along to local Chiefs of Police. Ray Kelly in NYC has his own warroom just for handling this incoming chatter.
Can you imagine that if anytime anyone under interrogation mentions “New York City” a copy of the file gets sent to Ray Kelly, how full his inbox must be?
Yet Bloomberg ran with THIS. Note again that the intel was two days old. We now know it was from a babbler informant in Iraq whose previous twelve statements on any leads outside of Iraq proved to have been pulled from his ass.
I’d say all of this tends to bolster suspicions that the poop alert was politicized and timed for PR purposes rather than to alert people to a real
threat.
Other events add to this horror mix. I mean, terror stew. Scare pie, what have you.
Not the least of which is how Bush's rehashed "terrer-terrer-terrer, 9/11-Saddam, terrer" speech (circa approval 39%) neatly coincides with the politically convenient bomb threat. A threat which rescued Bloomberg from a week of bad press. A week which culminated simultaneously with the big skipped debate and, lo and behold, Bloomy's "terror, subway-bomb, terror" declaration.
Wow. The modern GOP is little more than a mafia extortion racket slash crime syndicate complete with money laundering and bagmen.
They demand we pay them "protection" for threats that wouldn't exist if they didn't concoct them. Amazing.
Like, does anybody remember the terror alert for bombs in Manhattan’s financial institutions that was so TERRIFYING and 100% TRUE that immediately following the announcement, Governor Pataki, Laura Bush and the always-sober Bush twins showed up for a photo op "comforting" the employees of CitiBank? Then it was revealed that the intel was, oh, um, years old? No? Me neither.
MSNBC reported on how the pattern of “release-a-terror-threat gratia distract-or-boost approval ratings” is getting just a little too convenient. Many are well beyond cry-wolf-fatigue skepticism.
Far from mere anecdotal evidence, the effects of Government-issued terror warnings on Presidential approval ratings has become a widely followed framework among experts. See for example this study from last year in “Current Research in Social Psychology” published by Cornell University Press.
This manipulation of a frightened population is especially striking graphically.
While all of this craven fear-mongering shouldn’t come as a surprise to many of us jaded New Yorkers, please note: now our own Mayor Bloomberg could himself be indulging in the practice.
Ah, but he's a good mayor. Right? Blink-blink. Hm.
